With DPR Voting, firstly you vote for your party. This determines the voting strength of the government.
Secondly you vote for your MP.
You may choose your own party candidate but not necessarily so. You may choose to vote for the candidate who will be the best MP. This might well be an independent.
So you can vote for your party of Government and for an independent to be your MP. The one doesn’t cancel out the other.

How big a vote the MP has as an individual doesn’t really matter because the overall voting strength of the party is fixed by the first vote.

In the coming election, many voters will be faced with a dilemma - should they vote for the best candidate, or should they vote for the candidate of the party they want to form the government, when unhappily they are not the same?

I want a fair voting system – PR Government, but a system I understand. I want to vote for the best party for the Government, but also for the best MP. Voting must be simple and every vote should count.
I don’t want multimember constituencies– too much information! Or party lists. I want to elect an MP for my local area.

But I won’t get that at this election. The system is designed to return the same politics as before with one or other of the parties on top, at the flip of a coin in a few marginal seats.

After the coming election, there will be much talk of mandates, clearing out the dead wood, a new House of Commons etc. That will be just empty rhetoric, a sign that nothing will change until we get a new voting system, preferably Direct Party and Representative voting (DPR).

The Liberal Democrats are in favour of a referendum to increase the powers of the Welsh Assembly. The Liberal Democrats are in favour of electoral reform for the Westminster parliament.

The constitution of the Liberl Democrats states: "We believe that sovereignty rests with the people and that authority in a democracy derives from the people. We therefore acknowledge their right to determine the form of government best suited to their needs"

However, the Liberal Democrats are opposed to holding a constitutional referendum in Scotland. Why? Becassue in the bathetic words of their former Scottish leader "We are opposed to Scottish independence, so we are opposed to holding a referendum on Scottish independence."

Yes, once again, Scotland is different, somehow. Nick Clegg, and any Liberl Democrat who comes to my door in Aberden South, should knowthat I will never vote for them again unless they support the principles of liberal democracy in our own country.

Stephen Bishop - Proportional Representation does not need to mean many votes per person. See e.g. Single Transferable Vote as used in Ireland. And it certainly doesn't give the same results as first past the post.

As to pro-EU, as an Irishman, I'm all for more EU integration and less emphasis on national politics, particularly WRT geopolitical issues. European governance certainly needs more democracy - more power to MEPs would be a start - and more talent. But talent in politicians is a catch-22. The European Parliament attracts a relatively poor quality of politician because it is perceived to be of little consequence, but people argue against giving it more consequence because it is composed of poor quality politicians.

“I wish”, he confesses, “more people knew that the only one of the three main parties where not a single MP flipped from one property to the next, and not a single MP avoided capital-gains tax, where every single London MP did not claim a penny of second-home allowance, was the Liberal Democrats.”

Is this not to be highly commended?

Why would you vote for a party where their members
are screwing you, the taxpayer?

"And Mr Clegg's views on continued UK membership of the European Union now that LibDem support for integration is no longer certain?"

I believe that the Lib-Dems have promised a referendum on the EU, and are probably the only ones likely to stick to any promise made.

The Tories and Lib-Dems have a good working relationship when it comes to running councils together, so this is probably a better move than backing Labour should a vote produce a Hung Parliament, though in my personal view it maybe be better in Parliament was Hung and we started the whole thing from scratch. ;)

And Mr Clegg's views on continued UK membership of the European Union now that LibDem support for integration is no longer certain? How can a discussion on any party's role in a possible hung Parliament avoid the issue which is likely to determine the price demanded by smaller parties for their support? A price which is likely to be very high in terms of the country's future.

It is just such lazy and very typical of journalists to find one juicy interesting angle and keep banging on about it. Let the Lib Dems carry on with their election campaign without being asked about hung parliaments endlessly

First, It arrives at the same end as PR but wastes bodies. Why vote for an MP who only has .8% of a vote in Parliament.

Second, one of the claims of its proponents is that would allow strong independents to get elected. What use would they then be if, through picking up a miniscule amount on the government vote, their vote would count for nothing in parliament.

It's not clear to me which voting system is better than First past the post. I know it's got to go but DPR is not the solution.